OTRC: Barbara Walters announces 2014 retirement - 5 notable quotes

Barbara Walters officially announced her future retirement from television after more than 50 years, speaking on her ABC daytime talk show "The View" on Monday, May 13, following a network announcement a day earlier and weeks of rumors.

The 83-year-old legendary newscaster was given a standing ovation on the program as she took her seat beside her co-hosts.

"In the summer of 2014, a year from now, I plan to retire from appearing on television at all," Walters said on "The View. "It has been an absolutely joyful, rewarding, challenging, fascinating and occasional bumpy ride and I wouldn't change a thing."

"I'm perfectly healthy," added the veteran newswoman, who had heart surgery in 2010 and earlier this year suffered a head injury and battled chickenpox. "This is my decision. I've been thinking about it for a long time and this is what I want to do."

Walters began her TV journalism career in 1961, working for NBC's "Today" show as a writer and reporter for 15 years. She moved to ABC in 1976 to become the first woman to co-anchor an evening news program. Walters launched "The View" in 1997 and says she will continue to serve as a co-executive producer.

Throughout her career, she has interviewed some of the most famous people in the world -- every U.S. president since President Richard Nixon took officer in 1969, Fidel Castro, Moammar Kaddafi and Saddam Hussein and top movie stars such as Angelina Jolie.

Check out 5 notable quotes Barbara Walters made about her career and retirement from TV on "The View" on Monday.

1. "There will be special occasions and I will come back -- I'm not walking into the sunset. But I don't want to appear on another program. I don't want to climb another mountain. I want instead to sit in a sunny field and admire the very gifted women and, OK, some men too who will be taking my place."

2. "I've had an amazing career beyond anything I could ever have imagined and I hope I may also have inspired other women to make television in front or behind the camera as a career. I smile when young woman says, 'I grew up watching you on TV.' It's their time now."

3. (Quoted during a montage, in which she discussed her time on the "Today" show) "No one was more surprised than I because I wasn't beautiful like many of the women on the program before me. I had trouble pronouncing my R's. I still do. But by the way, during that time, I was able to change the category for the women on that program, who up until then were called 'Today Girls' to the new title of 'co-host.' I'm very proud of that."

4. "Somebody once asked me, 'cause I'd always worked with men, I'll just say it straight, if I'd ever slept my way to the top, had I ever thought about that? And I said, 'I wish I had, because I would've made it much faster.'"

5. "I want to leave while people are still saying, 'Why is she leaving?' instead of 'Why doesn't she leave?'"